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#aboutpainting#
"Girl with a Pearl Earring" is an oil painting on canvas by the 17th century Dutch painter Jan. Vermeer. The specification is 44.5X39cm, now in the Maurice Museum in The Hague, Netherlands. Cracks have developed on the surface of the painting, and after its restoration in 1994, the precise use of color and the intimate gaze of the young girl on the painting are particularly striking. Many people are speculating about the relationship between this girl and Jan. Some people think it is his daughter Maria, but Tracy Chevalier thinks it is a maid who loves Jan.
Jan. used an all-black background in this painting, resulting in a fairly strong three-dimensional effect. The black background highlights the charm of the girl's image, making her like a beacon in the dark, dazzling. The girl in the painting turned sideways and stared at us, her lips slightly open, as if to say something. Her flickering eyes showed earnestness, her head tilted slightly to the left, as if lost in a thousand thoughts. The teenage girl wears an unpretentious brown coat with a contrasting white collar, blue turban and draped lemon turban.
Girl with a Pearl Earring is called the Mona Lisa of the North. #About the
painter# Vermeer was an outstanding Dutch genre painter in the mid-17th century and a representative of the Delft genre painting school.
Rembrandt is collectively known as the three major Dutch painters. At a time when Dutch culture and art gradually lost its democratic traditions, the Dutch city of Delft became an advanced art center, and Vermeer (1632--1675) was born in this city and lived here for the rest of his life.
Although Vermeer was known before his death, he was impoverished and heavily in debt. When he was young and strong, he died suddenly, only 43 years old. After his death, he was forgotten, and was not rediscovered by art critics until the mid-nineteenth century, and since then his reputation has grown, giving him the place he deserves. He was called "the Sphinx who slept for two centuries" and was a "mysterious painter". His life has gradually been explored and researched, and we can only know its overview.
Vermeer excelled in the virtuosity of depicting fabrics, and his use of light and color was even more penetrating. No one knows Vermeer's technique, but it is certain that he often used Camera Obscura, a technique rare at the time, to capture light and color. Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, a famous Dutch scientist at the time, was a good friend of Vermeer, who was proficient in microscopy and optical perspective, and Vermeer apparently learned this technique from him.
Vermeer likes to use yellow, blue and gray, and most of his works depict peaceful and harmonious family life. He especially likes to paint the images and activities of women. In his handed down portraits, there are 40 female figures and only 13 male figures. The content of his oil paintings is usually one or two people working or relaxing indoors, and the light usually comes from the left side.
The whole picture of his paintings is warm, comfortable and quiet, giving people a solemn feeling, fully expressing the preference of Dutch citizens for a clean environment and an elegant and comfortable atmosphere. He is also unique in his artistic style. His paintings are solid in shape, delicate in structure, bright and harmonious in color, and especially good at expressing the sense of light and space in the interior. His works often show some distant implication and profound philosophy in the ordinary, which are both simple and unpredictable. There are 35 authentic works in existence.
#About the playwright#
Tracy Chevalier was born in Washington, USA in 1962 and moved to England in 1984. In 1994, he obtained a master's degree in creative writing from the University of East Angola, UK. The debut novel "Pure Blue" won the Smith Literary Award for Newcomer of the Year in one fell swoop; "Fallen Angels" aroused widespread concern in the world. Most of her works are themes of old women trying to break through environmental constraints and change their own destiny.
#About the Dutch Small School#
The Dutch Small School is a school of art that was popular in the Netherlands in the 17th century. Its paintings got rid of the control of the nobility and the church, and mainly served the public class, mainly depicting still lifes, landscapes and customs. After his works are completed, they are usually bought by ordinary citizens to be hung in their homes to beautify their homes or offices, so the scales of the works are generally not large.
The "Netherlands Revolution" in 1609 finally ended with the independence of the Netherlands and the establishment of the "Dutch Republic", which was the first bourgeois republic in European history and the most prosperous and advanced country in Europe. The society under the emerging capitalist system has more democracy and freedom than the feudal autocratic society, which makes art get rid of the shackles of religion and the court, and face the secular life more widely. In order to establish monuments for themselves, decorate halls and residences, beautify the living environment and arty style, the bourgeoisie and the burghers ordered a large number of oil paintings.
Under the progressive social system in which the status and value of people are affirmed, painters can boldly abandon the religion that has imprisoned people and art for thousands of years, and take the real life of people as the blueprint for their artistic creation. What the painter is interested in is the daily life of ordinary citizens and the beautiful and colorful natural scenery.
There are two characteristics of the paintings of the "Small Dutch School of Painting": first, the paintings are relatively small in size, suitable for the burghers to hang indoors to decorate their rooms; second, they do not show major social themes, and pay special attention to the description of the details of life , to cater to the aesthetic tastes of the public class. The pictures mostly show women dressing up, playing the piano and singing, reading and writing letters, or doing light housework, showing the limitations of the flourishing process of Dutch art. Gerald Tebauch, Pieter de Hooch and Gabriel Metisier are typical representative painters of the "Little Dutch School".
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